About amyreinink

I'm an award-winning writer and middle-of-the-pack runner who moved to the Washington area as a freelance journalist in October 2008. I'm also a marathon runner who recently signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon on Oct. 25, 2009. This blog, which I first started to chronicle my training for the National Half Marathon on March 21, 2009, is the story of my training for the MCM, and for many shorter races before it. I have run one full marathon and three half-marathons previously, and I'm looking to improve my time of 4:34 from the Nashville Country Music Marathon in April 2007. To avoid burnout and injuries, I'll be using the FIRST marathon-training method — running three hard days a week and cross-training hard two days a week. In this blog, I'll provide suggestions for running routes, training strategies, staying motivated, cross-training without boredom, injury prevention, playlists, sports nutrition and more.
I live in a revamped Canada Dry bottling plant in Silver Spring, Md., that serves as a jumping-off point for running in Rock Creek Park, camping in Shenandoah National Park and skiing at Whitetail Resort, where my husband, Steve, and I are members of the Mountain Safety Team.

“The baby in the forest goes ‘wah, wah, wah,’ all through the woods,” I sing.

We are five minutes in to a hike. I am singing a song with my own lyrics set to the tune of “The Wheels of the Bus.” H, now 14 months old, stops shrieking for a moment and sings along: La, la, la. We laugh. Soon, he begins shrieking again. I offer a cracker. I place another dangly toy on the hiking pack he’s riding in. I get ready to dig out the Ergo, in case he’ll be more amenable to the soft carrier. I wonder if this hike is really worth it.

H and Dada hiking to Owl’s Head in Keene, N.Y.

Now that H is mobile, he has become less amenable to spending time in the hiking pack. As outdoor-loving people looking to raise an outdoor-loving kid, this leaves us scratching our heads to figure out how best to introduce the woods to a kid who’s barely walking.

To be clear, we’re not trying to raise the second baby to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail (though the first baby’s journey is fun to watch from afar). In the example above, our goal was to make it less than a mile, to a pond that happens to be on the way to one of New York’s 46ers.

The following tactics have helped: Making sure he is physically comfortable (layers to accommodate weather changes, nothing poking or pinching). Snacks (our hikes are fueled by halved grapes and Ritz crackers). Toys on the top of the pack. Singing (we have LOTS of verses of “The Baby in the Forest.”)

But you know what helps the most? Letting go of any agenda we have to actually hike.

Who wants to sit in a pack when you can scoot around on the rocks?

It turns out, we already have an outdoors-loving kid. He just prefers to experience the woods in an up-close-and-personal manner, by getting the heck out of the pack and throwing leaves and pine needles like confetti; splashing in streams and brooks; touching the moss growing on trailside rocks; and zig-zagging up and down the trail at his own speed. We’ve started letting him do just that after about 10 minutes of hiking in the pack. Because really, the goal isn’t to raise a kid who summits high peaks so much as it’s to raise a kid who loves and appreciates his world.

When we return to the trailhead, we see a family of fit-looking people getting ready to launch their own peak attempt.

“Nice singing,” says the dad, smiling. I explain that the singing is a necessary ingredient in a shriek-free hike. The dad points to his teenage son.

“When he was little, we went to Colorado and tried to hike with him in a pack like that,” he says. “We thought we’d do these great hikes. He only wanted to throw rocks in the stream.”

How wonderful to see that one little rock-thrower grew into mom and dad’s hiking buddy! I watch them embark on their hike feeling optimistic about the future—and also feeling pretty certain that they miss the throwing-rocks-in-a-stream days now and then.

Have you hiked with a toddler? How did you make the experience more fun?

An essential truth of parenting: All of the sappiest parenting cliches are true. The one that most hits home right now, as my precious baby boy’s first birthday grows smaller in the rearview mirror: It goes by quickly.

Really and truly, it feels as though only a few weeks have passed since his six-month birthday. Before any more time slips away, I want to give praise to a few of the groups, activities and resources that have made the time more joyful and companionable.

Hike It Baby

As my husband’s paternity leave came to a close last summer, I found myself frantically searching for baby-appropriate outings to keep us occupied, socialized and sane. “There’s a group called ‘Hike it Baby,'” I told my husband with glee. “Can you believe how perfect that is?” It’s just what it sounds like: Parents hiking with babies and toddlers, sometimes at a toddler’s pace, other times at an adults-wearing-babies-and-toddlers pace. It’s been a great way to make friends, as there’s some serious bonding that happens when someone helps you calm a melting-down newborn in the middle of the woods.

Our very first Hike it Baby outing. It’s hard to believe he was ever this tiny!

I always imagined I’d hike with H, but our outings to the places we’d hiked previously—longer, steeper treks an hour or more away from home—don’t even seem worth the effort these days. Hike it Baby has taught me that you don’t need to ascend a peak or drive far away to feel the restorative effects of the outdoors. I’ve learned all sorts of new treks within a 10-minute drive of my front door, with gentle enough terrain that my now-toddler (sniff, sniff) can stroll with ease. Now, the only trick is getting him to wear shoes …

Parent Boot Camp

One morning when H was two months old, I couldn’t do anything to soothe him. He wasn’t hungry, didn’t have a diaper situation, didn’t want to nap—he seemingly just wanted to cry. “Let’s go cry at the Y,” I told him. We went to the Saratoga Springs YMCA‘s Parent Boot Camp class, which I’d previously worried might be too loud and chaotic, what with the loud music, the toddlers running around and riding tricycles and the older kids climbing up the walls (sometimes literally). We went—and he fell asleep in his stroller! As he grew older, he loved staying awake and watching the big kids run around, and now, he scoots around the room on his butt, on the hunt for basketballs to push around. His mornings actually seem a little bit less happy when he doesn’t get that stimulation.

He likes to try to push mama’s weights around the floor.

And me! Not only do I get a great workout without having to put H in the Y’s daycare; I get a village of other parents trying their best to stay healthy and strong while raising tiny, adorable, exhausting little people. I’ve gotten some of the best nuggets of parenting wisdom while running laps around the gym and talking about teething or nap transitions or whatever stage we’re in. And I get the wonderful, necessary feeling that we’re all in this parenting thing together.

By the way, the name “Cry at the Y” stuck. These days, we’re more likely to call it “Boom Boom Room”—as in, “I think he’s cranky because he didn’t hear his Boom Boom Room music today.”

Talking a walk

This is so simple, I almost don’t want to include it. And yet, it is so magical, I feel like I have to. We have been taking long, restorative walks since one week after H got home, and it remains the go-to option for soothing him when he’s teething, sick or generally feeling out of sorts. Just as he misses the stimulation of the Y when we miss our boot-camp class, it seems like he misses the fresh air when we don’t get a healthy dose of it early in the day. Is it more tiring for me than sitting him down in front of a screen? Yes. Does it leave us *both* feeling like someone pressed the “reset” button by the time we come home? Also yes.

If you’re currently raising tiny, adorable, exhausting people (it’s the best kind of tired, but man, am I tired at the end of every day!), I’d love to hear the groups and activities that make up your world. And if you’re looking for tips for getting dinner on the table during *any* busy season of life, check out my food-writer friend Whitney’s recent post on the topic—her recipe for nights when the sky is falling looks delicious!

The day after my graduation from yoga-teacher training in May 2016, I jotted down some notes about lessons learned. The next day, I was admitted to the hospital with preeclampsia, and I remained there until I delivered my son on June 1, 2016. The notes fell to the wayside, but the lessons did not, and I wanted to share some of the ones with the most staying power here.

Graduation day with my teacher, May 2016.

If you think yoga is about handstands or stretching, you’re missing the best part. There’s nothing wrong with going to yoga to get a stretch or a workout or a yoga butt. But if you’ve gone to yoga for one of these reasons, you’ve probably noticed that you leave feeling a little bit more lighthearted and relaxed, or maybe even blissful. Part of the joy of getting serious about yoga is admitting that it was really never about the handstands or stretches, but has always been about connecting with the body, the breath and the wisest version of yourself. And when you go in with the intention of connecting with your highest power or wisest self? Man, do things get good!

There’s no such thing as “perfect” alignment of a pose. Our posture clinics were led by two 1,000-hour certified yoga teachers who have trained in numerous schools of yoga, including yoga therapeutics. This means they’ve trained with people who see the only expression of Warrior I as with a narrow stance, a sealed back heel, with the hips completely square. They’ve also trained with people who have hurt their hips after years of forcing their bodies into that position, because it didn’t serve their particular anatomy. The fact is, the poses are all pretty modern—created for Indian boys in the 1800s—and are not, as I’d imagined, written in stone next to the Ganges River. It was fascinating to learn how differently all of our bodies are built, and to try to build the “perfect” pose for our particular bodies—which in itself could be a lifelong journey.

I will spend the rest of my life trying to perfect my downward facing dog. When a friend of mine went through her own yoga-teacher training several years ago, I remember her saying that she was obsessed with working on her mountain pose. That’s the one in which you’re basically just standing up. I get what she meant now. You can spend hours trying to activate and then soften each muscle in your body to best express any pose. And even when you feel like you’ve got it all just right, you breathe, and it all changes, and you must activate it again. This is actually the best part—realizing that there is no such thing as being “balanced,” but only the never-ending act of balancing.

My fellow graduates.

We’re all hungry for authenticity and community, and we get there through vulnerability. We were all attracted to our teacher, Kim Beekman, because of the community she creates through her willingness to be vulnerable with her classes. During our training, we created the same sense of community for ourselves. I learned that yoga isn’t about learning physical skills, such as balancing or stretching—it is a stripping away of the things that we falsely believe define us, like our jobs, our clothes, our resumes and our bodies. And we begin to strip all of that stuff away by getting real with each other about our fears and our feelings of inadequacy and all the other feelings we think are unique to us. (They’re not).

Yoga teachers, I’d love to know: What’s the most important lesson you learned during your teacher-training?

In my early 20s, when we were still light years away from being ready to introduce an additional human to our home, I had a conversation about body acceptance with a friend who’d recently had a baby.

“I have jeans that don’t fit me anymore, and they’ll probably never fit me again,” she said with a shrug.

This was before I understood the blessing of a new, precious human life (I’m sorry to sound so cliche, but I feel like every parenting cliche is absolutely true), and I’m kind of ashamed to admit that this statement haunted me. I’m sorry, but did you just say that my jeans might never fit me again? I wondered how I’d handle the challenge of trying to maintain some sort of fitness level postpartum.

The most amazing thing happened while I was pregnant with Henry, and after he joined us: I learned that many of my closely held beliefs about what it takes to be strong, fit and capable as an athlete and human were wrong, or at least kind of misguided. Here are a few of those false beliefs.

1. If you can’t work out intensely, there’s no point in bothering to work out at all. When we first brought Henry home, he and I took a lot of walks. I didn’t even see walking as a workout, but just a way to get fresh air. Imagine my surprise when our frequent walks led to fitness gains. Who woulda thunk?

Our first of many walks. This one was about a week after we brought Henry home. I’m doing my best to impersonate a sane person.

2. I will struggle with body image during and after pregnancy. When I got pregnant with Henry, I totally, truly detached from feeling like my body needed to look a certain way, or perform athletically in any way, shape or form. I lost interest in the idea of jeans fitting or not fitting, and wore comfy skirts all summer. Because who cares about jeans size when your body has grown a human? (I mean, seriously—*grown a human being!*)

3. There’s no way my 30-minute home workout will be as good as my hour-and-a-half-long session in a gym lifting heavy weights. Was I more fit when I did really focused, intense, hour-and-a-half workouts than I am while doing 30-minute workouts? Sure. But I was not three times more fit—maybe 5 percent at best. I do a version of this one from SELF magazine a few times a week, and it astounds me that I ever thought I needed more to stay in shape for skiing, short runs and other adventures.

4. Exercise classes geared toward new parents will be good place-holders until I can do my “real” workouts. What made me think I had a monopoly on good ideas for my exercise regimen? And why was I so snobby about parent boot-camp classes? In this day and age, many of the other parents in the parent boot-camp class I take at my local YMCA a few times a week are former college athletes who also want to get in shape to hike, bike, run and ski, and the instructors tailor workouts to this crowd. That class has reminded me of the painful efficacy of tuck jumps, and has introduced me to inverted mountain-climbers. Guess what I wouldn’t have been doing on my own? Those exercises.

H before our first parent boot-camp class at our local YMCA back in August. Now, he prefers to scoot around on a blanket while mama works out.

5. I will really miss the freedom to do whatever workout I’d like to do on a given day. I only make it to a formal yoga class once a week at best, and I can’t even imagine when it will seem worth it to spend an hour or two of my free time swimming in a pool. But in the biggest surprise of all, I totally don’t care. No workout is quite as much fun as blowing raspberries at my little man and watching him giggle in response. I feel so strongly that have my whole life to train for distance races, but only a brief period of time to snuggle a sweet baby.

If you’ve been down this path, I’d love to hear about your lessons learned about postpartum fitness!

In early 2015, I was ecstatic to find out I was pregnant. In June 2015, during a routine ultrasound during an otherwise healthy pregnancy, I learned my baby had no heartbeat. Doctors induced labor later that day, and on June 19, after five months of pregnancy, I delivered a perfect baby girl, Susannah Grace.

I didn’t know how to write about it, and I didn’t know how to not write about it. So I kind of just went missing, and posted vague mentions of finding peace amid grief and loss by connecting to nature.

One of many healing hikes.

When I learned I was pregnant again, I was gun-shy about sharing the news. I didn’t feel comfortable posting here about pregnancy workouts and using yoga and meditation to find a sense of ease during pregnancy; I didn’t even share the news with some close friends and family members.

My son is now here, safe and sound. He is curious and smiley and strong, and is the absolute embodiment of joy and awe. He is also the best personal trainer a girl can ask for—at 3.5 months, he won’t nap unless I take him for a walk in the stroller or a hike in the Ergo. He requires fresh air and movement to relax. I wonder where he gets it?

One of many calming walks.

I want to tell you about squeezing in strength workouts while your baby naps, and about how meditation can help you find peace, calm and presence when your baby’s been screaming for hours in the middle of the night. I want to tell you about becoming a yoga teacher and meditation facilitator. But first, I need to tell you about Susannah.

She was much-loved and much-wanted. The nausea I felt early in my pregnancy with her was ameliorated only by chicken wings and Polar seltzer water, so we celebrate the mark she made on our lives by dining at our favorite chicken-wing restaurant. She sent me down a path that was different than the one I was on. I embarked on a 200-hour yoga-teacher training after yoga helped me to reconcile my grief. She also inspired me to begin volunteering with Angel Names Association (ANA), a Saratoga Springs, N.Y., based nonprofit that provides a variety of supportive programs for the families of stillborn babies nationwide.

On Oct. 8, we will be participating in ANA’s annual memorial walk in Saratoga Spa State Park in Susannah’s memory. The walk aims in part to raise awareness about pregnancy loss and stillbirth, and it’s in that spirit that I’m sharing my experience here. When I lost Susannah, I felt so isolated—I had never knowingly met another woman who’d lost a baby so far along in a pregnancy. By sharing my story, I hope that someone, somewhere, feels less alone.

Help me help the families of stillborn babies here —> www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/amy-reinink/ana-walk

The walk also raises money for ANA’s programs, including one which provides financial assistance to families who can’t afford a funeral or headstone for their stillborn babies. I hope you’ll consider making a small donation toward my fund-raising goal via my Firstgiving page. In doing so, you’ll not only provide a bright spot to families in their darkest hours, but will help me to honor and remember my daughter—the ray of sunlight who illuminated my desire to be a mom to a baby who could love me back here on earth.

I brought my cap and goggles everywhere we went in Hawaii, dutifully scoping out currents and waves and weather conditions to find the perfect open-water swimming spot.

From Barking Sands to Poipu, the cap and goggles stayed in my bag. I tried to be a good, safe swimmer by opting out anytime I noticed a funky-looking current, or anytime the waves seemed more conducive to surfing—which turned out to be just about everywhere on Kauai.

Don’t cry for me—I sat on the beach and watched waves like these, at Poipu, crash onshore.

By the time we landed on Oahu’s North Shore, famed for house-size waves that challenge the world’s best surfers, I’d accepted that I wouldn’t be doing much swimming this trip. Oh, how wrong I was.

Our Airbnb host in Waialua told us about a beach near our rental cottage, saying it was “really mellow” and “mainly a park for moms to bring their kids to.” As soon as we arrived at Aweoweo Beach Park, I noticed a several swimmers doing laps around the gorgeous cove, which was as mellow as promised thanks to a reef that protected the area from offshore waves. I took a quick dip to literally test the waters—no funky currents, and no waves to speak of. I ran back to our rental cottage to grab my poor, neglected cap and goggles for some playtime.

Aweoweo Beach Park in Waialua, on Oahu’s North Shore.

I swam along the shoreline for a bit, in awe of the visibility in the crystal-clear water. I saw a few big iridescent fish and a few tiny, colorful striped ones.

The water was so perfectly clear!

Then, I swam out toward the coral reef protecting the rest of the beach from the waves crashing out at sea, and I saw a turtle with a blackish green shell eating barnacles off a pyramid-shaped concrete structure underwater. I floated around him in total awe. I picked my head up to breath, and he picked his head up, too! Pure magic.

The tiny speck in this zoomed-in, grainy iPhone photo is me, planning to stay in the water forever.

If we hadn’t had a flight back to the mainland that afternoon, I may have never left that beach. Consider this blog post me paying it forward to any other swimmer vacationing in Hawaii who happens to Google “best open-water swim spot on Oahu.” I’m no authority on which spot is actually best, but if there’s anything better than this one, I’m not sure I want to know about it.

Our teacher is big on Yoga with a Big Y, which means de-emphasizing asana or hatha yoga (the poses we all know and love) and focusing instead on the spiritual practice described in texts like the Bhagavad Gita and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra. We spent lots of time in meditation, and a lot of time talking about the ego, nonattachment to outcome and the practice of realizing that we are not our thoughts, our worries, our fears, or any of the other things we often identify with.

Are you still with me? If so, just think about the bajillion ways we can apply these principles to everyday life. How much happier would your next marathon be if you trained your hardest, yet wed yourself to the process, not the outcome (i.e., “I will complete X training schedule over Y weeks with the hope of running 26.2 miles in 3:39” versus “IF I DO NOT BQ THIS RACE IS WORTHLESS”)? How much better would your Monday morning be if you learned that you could watch rather than identify with the crazy to-do list loops running through your mind?

Like I said: Amazing, intense, and hard to explain in words.

Although the physical practice was deemphasized, we still learned a totally incredible amount about alignment and anatomy from two 1,000-hour certified teachers who have each studied in various schools of yoga. Over the course of 10 days, I realized that I could likely spend years just trying to perfect my downward-facing dog (or my mountain pose, for that manner). I also learned to see this fact as exciting rather than discouraging. As one of our teachers put it: “That’s why we call it a yoga practice, not a yoga finish.”

I have 110 hours of training left over three long weekends between now and May. Stay tuned!